This was a private letter written to a friend with little/no background in the Bible a little over a year ago.
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Hey [Friend],
[Brief personal greeting]...
From the amount of time it took me to respond, you probably
thought I forgot when in reality I’ve been thinking about my response almost
daily and have even worked on a number of drafts.
At the end of the day, I don’t think there will be a
satisfactory answer from a theist to a non-theist on the problem of natural
evils in the world. If I didn’t believe in God, I don’t think the following
response would hold much weight. So in me sharing this, I hope to simply offer
my humble and limited perspective on a heavy issue that Christians themselves
can often disagree on. I think there is a level of mystery here as to why God
allows bad things to happen in the natural world.
To start, I believe, based on the Bibles teaching, that God
is the greatest good in the universe and that knowing him is the very best
thing that can happen in our lives. Everything else, including temporary
physical health, wealth and prosperity is secondary to knowing the God of the
Bible, revealed in Jesus. Orthodox Christian belief teaches that when sin (sin
is best defined as broken relationships. A broken relationship with God will
lead to broken relationships with people) entered into the world it caused
death. Humanities first sin was the desire to be God and have ultimate
knowledge apart from him. This caused the breakdown in which you noted and
understood between humans: lying, cheating, stealing, murder, etc. When
humanity freely chose to break relationship with God by ‘doing there own thing’
(aka sinning), it separated them from the source of all life, God. Humanity,
separated from the source of life is destined to die a physical and spiritual
death. This forms the basis of Christian belief.
The paragraph above explains a Christians understanding of
how death originally entered into the perfect world God created and why people
do bad things to other people. The harder question to tackle is how a human’s
decision to break relationship with God (by desiring to be God) caused a rift
in the natural world. Christians believe that prior to the moment humans chose
to sin, tornados earthquakes, disease and every other natural disaster we can
think of didn’t exist. If they did happen to exist, they wouldn’t have caused
human death. After humans sinned, they did. I’ve never fully understood how
people sinning could cause a rift in the natural world- I even asked my
professor about this in Bible College and he didn’t give me a definitive answer
(if I remember correctly). I’ve taken comfort in the fact that even the Bible
itself asks these questions. In the chapters of Job (pronounced Jobe), Job asks
God the ‘why’ question. Paraphrased “Why
did you allow all these terrible things to occur to me, my family to be killed,
my health+wealth to be taken away?” God responds in the final chapters of that
section with “where were you when I created the universe…,” before going into a
monologue asking Job rhetorical questions. God asks Job if Job understands his
total plans for the universe and for humanity from the beginning to end. Job
responds with a “no” essentially and the end of this story concludes with God
restoring (and doubling) Job’s health+wealth+prosperity.
So back to the conversation on natural evil. I believe that
God has given every human a free will. We can freely choose to obey or disobey
what he has asked us to do. I still disobey what he asks of me on a daily
basis, but His grace carries me still. In Romans chapter 8 verse 20, it says
that “For the creation [everything] was subjected to
frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected
it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from bondage to decay…” The
“one who subjected it,” is God and his desire is for his creation to know him
and to choose him. If God is the ultimate good and knowing him is the very best
thing that could ever happen to us, him allowing terrible things to occur in
this world could be a grace. I’ve heard a Christian philosopher say
(paraphrased), “How can God get the attention of free creatures with free wills
to freely chose him?” From my own experience and the experience of others,
death can be one of those things that makes us think about how we are living
today. “What is life all about, why am I here,” and other similar questions
that aren’t often asked when skies are blue. The great thinker C.S. Lewis said
in his book ‘The Problem of Pain’ “We can ignore even
pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our
pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his
megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” I believe God can use and allow
horrific natural and moral tragedies to bring free creatures into freely
choosing him, the greatest good for our lives. The Bible says that, “God is
love and no darkness [evil] exists in him (1 John 1:5).” Because God is love,
he would never force anyone to chose him against their will. But him knowing
that he is the greatest good for humanity will allow things that we consider
terrible, to get our attention and to turn our focus on him, the author of
life.
Recently I was diagnosed with a pea sized cyst in my brain
[3/9/17 Note: Upon removal, it was later discovered that this “cyst” was a
cancerous tumor]. It’s still in there and I’m still going through the process
of healing from the initial surgery to reduce all the pressure this thing
caused. We don’t fully know how it got there, but it is most likely parasite
related from something I ate in another country. Based on my understanding of
the Bible, I believe that God could have ‘sent’ this to me, like he sent the
plagues to the Egyptians that enslaved the Hebrew people; or he allowed it to
happen when I ate something undercooked. Personally I cringe when people say
things like “those Haitians worshipped the devil, that’s why god sent them an
earthquake.” I think that’s ignorant. They don’t actually know that God sent
anything. Maybe we just live in a world fractured by sin and that country
happened to be over a fault line when plates shifted? I do know that after this
horrible event (and others like it) many people freely turned to the God of the
Bible. The Bible says that “God works all things together for the good of those
who love Him.” For those in relationship with the Creator of the Universe, we
have hope that he will bring good out of dark situations. What Christians do
know, is that God loves the broken world literally to death, as we see when
Christ died on the Cross. Jesus being God entered into a broken world with
moral/natural evil and experienced all these pains like we do today. The
Christians greatest hope is based on Christ’s resurrection and defeat of death,
which I believe there is good historical evidence for, and that one day Christ
will return and completely renew this broken world (This is found in Revelation
chapter 21). My prayer is that through my life or death, God would use me as a
messenger for the hope that is only found in him, the greatest good for the
world.
At this point, I’ve written you a small essay and I
apologize for its length. There was more I would like to talk about such as
real faith and what Jesus did for the world, but I will save that for another
day. I’m thankful to know your family and want you to know if you ever have
questions about Christianity, I would do my best to honestly answer them.
All the best,
Piper
